Kai Whakapai

Rating: 2

We ate lunch here in August 2023.

Katsu chicken burger with chips and aioli
Mushroom, onion jam and walnut pizza

Kai Whakapai, we need to talk. You’ve been on this busy corner for 25 years and you’ve gotten complacent. You were lucky to become an institution, we’ve seen better establishments than you come and go. Business Andy has fond memories of previous visits here, and we expected better.

The first three mouthfuls of the chicken burger were somehow all bread. Where’s the sauce? We could see the chicken, yet somehow none was in our mouth. There was just not enough sauce, not enough chicken, not even enough coleslaw. The chips were yummy but paired with an aioli that was way too mustardy.

The pizza sounded really yummy. The sauce base was a parmesan white sauce, rather than the traditional tomato. Something different, we’re always keen for that. Unfortunately, their white sauce tasted like nothing so when you had a mouthful that didn’t have mushroom, which was frequently, there really wasn’t a lot happening flavour wise. The onion jam pieces were rare (so rare the Fee-Rex questioned whether they were even present) and the walnut, while good, was more of a texture thing.